Maybe since I'm on my way to go skiing I'll post this TR first. That way, anyone has a problem with our style I don't have to hear about it.

Mt. Langley (14,042'). FA of the peak was a Clarence King goof in 1871 (he thought it was going to be Mt. Whitney). All through the last century it was the peak-bagger's Fourteener, with no route over third class. Must be nothin there.

Yet it's pretty obvious, even from the dusty shoulder of Hwy 395 south of Lone Pine, that the North Face is steep. Hard to get to, though. Roadhead is that strange stone Ashram under the South Face of Lone Pine Peak, and thousands of feet up a canyon of talus is enough to make you think skis.

Just under the wire of the Millenium, though, Alois Smrz and Miguel Carmona spent two days in September 1999 putting up "Rest and Be Thankful" (IV+ or V, 5.9 or 5.10, 15 pitches) on the North Arete, which clocks in at about 2000 feet. Yep, nothing to see here, move right along folks. They did a planned bivi high on the route, and here is one of their shots of some pretty excellent-looking rock near the summit. They called this pitch the crux, and likened it (how appropriate is this today?) to Tax Man at Josh.


Michael Thomas and I got intrigued with that and started digging around the Internet for photos of the 600-foot tower they skipped at the bottom of their arete, dreaming of a direct start. Also noticing other potential ridge lines on that rather big wall. We liked the idea of approaching on skis, too, only it was September.

We took the easy way, driving the Horseshoe Meadows Road to the second highest trailhead (10,041') in the Sierra that goes toward Cottonwood Lakes and New Army Pass. For an Eastside trail, the approach is casual. Five miles and only a thousand feet up brings you to the rim of Cottonwood Basin, famous for Golden Trout. But what caught our eye, of course, was the mile-wide, 1200' high South Face of Langley. Completely untouched. Notice the summit of Langley, right above the tallest part of the wall in the center. It's actually a ways behind the top of the wall, like half a mile.


Right then and there we forgot all about hiking around to the North Face. Found ourselves a gorgeous sandy campsite a little ways from the lakes and went to look at the wall. It's pretty nice wandering around that basin


Getting off the ground, though, was harder than it looked. Starting to probe the wall I immediately ran into roundy and insecure 5.10 climbing. Runout too. Not what we had in mind. Rap off. That was the only thing we left behind on the whole wall, a tiny rap sling. I will say, though, that the potential for more direct crack lines is pretty striking (the good stuff is just around the corner out of sight in this shot).


Toward the end of the day we hiked left up a big talus fan, and right on the edge of a deep chimney found a 5.9 start to get traction on the wall. Anyone who wants to carp about our style, here's your chance: we fixed two pitches and went back to camp.
Here's the route:


We named the line S-Wall, for obvious reasons and in honor of one of the classic lines at Quartz Mountain, Oklahoma (why not?). Here we are about five pitches up, still on the lower leg of the S. Clean, blocky High Sierra climbing, occasionally 5.8. Fun!


Where the S turns leftward you land on a little spire for a short pitch of downclimbing. Then things open up, romping up easy plates and knobs on great orange rock


Above there is a deep chimney that gets so wide at the top I had to lunge for the exit. No photo, and anyway you can probably climb around it. Now we're on the upper recurve of the S, the rock has gotten steep again, and we're distracted by a stuck-rope snafu that burned the rest of our daylight. Which led to some exciting exploration up steep Tuolumne-style knobs by headlamp, occasionally 5.8. Some of the most intense climbing on the route, with great position that unfortunately we couldn't see. Or photograph.

Eventually things started to ease off and we bounded along the final ridge to unrope at Midnight. I started getting lazy, but Michael prodded me onward to summit at 1:15 and finally down to crawl into our sleeping bags at 4:00 AM. A full-value day.

S-Wall (IV, 5.9, 15 pitches) September, 2008.

Sun drove us out of our bags to admire our route by ten the next morning. We broke out one of those packaged fondues and a baguette of sourdough for a victory feast, complete with uncorking a good Chardonnay.

There's so much more where that came from. Just direct-starting the bottom of the S would yield several pitches of 5.10 crack climbing. Not to mention the rest of the mile-wide wall. It's a shame the approach is so casual...

Yep, nothing left to do in the Sierra.